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JUL 9 1910 ^ 



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OF 



Senator Chauncey M. Depew 



AT THL 



NINLTLLNTH ANNUAL DINNER 



GIVEN BY THL 



MoNTAUK Club of Brooklyn 

In Celebration of His Birthday 
on April 23, 1910 



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Speech of Senator Chauncey M. Depew at the ^. 

Nineteenth Annual Dinner Given by the "^ 

Montauk Club of Brooklyn, in 
Celebration of His Birthday, 
on April 23, 1910. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : 

No language can express fittingly my pleasure at the 
renewal of your greeting. For nearly two decades 
you have gathered annually in honor of my birthday. Mem- 
bers of all political parties, and all religious faiths, men in 
the professions, in business, in journalism, in literature, in 
the multifarious activities and antagonisms of American 
life, lay their differences aside for this festive night, as they 
have done during all these years. This holding in abeyance 
and suspension the antagonisms which divide men upon 
many lines is only ordinarily possible at a funeral. Even 
in that case, some go as far as did the late Judge Hoar 
who detested Wendell Phillips, and when requested by the 
family to be a pallbearer sent back word declining, but with 
the remark, "I approve of the proceedings." It is a refuta- 
tion of the universal charge against us that we are so 
absorbed in materialism that we have lost all faculty for 
the healthy enjoyment of association and that attrition of 
minds without rancor which promotes truth and longevity, 
for tonight, whatever we were yesterday or will be to- 
morrow, is devoted whole-heartedly and unselfishly to com- 
radeship and good-fellowship. 



Thankful for Life and Blessings. 

At seventy-six tlie world ought to seem no different on 
its spiritual, its ethical, and its human side than it did at 
forty-six. A statesman and politician who had won many 
distinctions and been blessed with a multitude of devoted 
followers closed his career and his life with the pathetic 
inquiry, "What does it all amount to?" If I should attempt 
to estimate what the world had all amounted to for me 
from the day I entered Peekskill Academy at ten years of 
age until this hour, volumes would not suffice, and, there- 
fore, I sum it all up in this, "For a long life, abounding in 
good things, in a capacity for enjoying everything, in recip- 
rocal attachments and contributions with multitudes of men 
and women, in more than my share of health and of 
happiness, I reverently thank God both that I am alive and 
that I have lived." 

I read an account the other day of a Russian, named 
Ivan Kusman, who was admitted to the hospital in St. 
Petersburg at the age of 138. He remembered Napoleon's 
burning of Moscow and the few incidents that occur in the 
career of a Russian peasant. He was an agricultural la- 
borer for a mere pittance during this whole period, and 
could neither read nor write. That is not an experience 
to be envied. It enforces Tennyson's lines, "Better fifty 
years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." But, on the con- 
trary, when you think of Auber composing his best operas 
at 89 and Manual Garcia still an instructor in vocal culture 
at 100, and Whittier singing immortal songs at 85, you 
are in contact with men who have lived and who know "what 
it all amounts to." 

Some Ancient Rules of Health. 

There is an eastern maxim that every man at forty is 
either a fool or a physician. It is eminently true. That 
old Italian, Carnaro, who found all of his associates in 
Venice dying at forty, made up his mind that these tragedies 



^vel■e due to excesses. He had the strength of will to adopt 
a very severe but frugal regimen both in eating and drink- 
ing. At 80 he published his experiences for the benefit of 
those who were still dying or likely to die at 40. At 90 and 
at 100 he repeated the publication and enforced the lesson 
of the happiness which had come to him with health and 
longevity, declaring the same might be shared by every man. 
His plan was very simple. He selected out of the many 
things he liked a few for his table, masticated thoroughly, 
long before Fletcherism was known, and limited the quantity 
by measurement upon the scales to half what he had usually 
■devoured, reduced his wine to the minimum, and at that 
time tobacco had not been discovered. 

Moderation and Activity. 

Fifty-four years in public and semi-public life and upon 
the platform all over this country and in Europe for all 
sorts of objects in every department of human interest have 
given me a larger acquaintance than almost anybody living. 
The sum of observation and experience growing out of this 
opportunity is that granted normal conditions, no hereditary 
troubles, and barring accidents and plagues, the man who 
•dies before seventy commits suicide. Mourning the loss of 
friends has led me to study the causes of their earlier 
departure. It could invariably be traced to intemperance 
in the broadest sense of that word ; intemperance in eating, 
in drinking, in the gratification of desires, in work and in 
irregularity of hours, crowning it all with unnecessary 
worry. Pythagoras said, "Beware of ballots if you wish 
to live long." In other words, the old philosopher advised 
keeping out of politics. In his time the defeated party ran 
the risk of death, or imprisonment, or exile, and so the 
advice was good, "Beware of ballots." But, in our country 
where the citizen is a sovereign and responsible for the gov- 
ernment of his country, his state, his city, his village or 
his town, an active interest in public affairs and party 



management gives healthy circulation to the blood, healthy 
exercise and activity to the muscles, and inspiration and 
enlargement to the mind, and satisfaction in results which 
all tend to length of years and usefulness. 

The Great Year of 1834. 

The year of my birth, 1834, seems a long way off on the 
calendar but mightv short in the retrospect. The Roman 
Emperor Hadrian spent the revenues of an empire upon 
astrologers who should forecast his future from the con- 
junction of the stars at his birth. If you are so inclined, 
you can have that work done now for fifty cents. But, 
suppose we leave the stars to the astronomer and come 
down to earth. In 1834 Cardinal Gibbons, Doctor Eliot 
of Harvard, President Benjamin Harrison, Justice Harlan 
of the Supreme Court, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, and 
Edmund Clarence Stedman, the poet, also fell under the 
influence of the powers of Heaven and earth which started 
them on their careers. Every year has its distinction, but 
this one seems to have brought forth more than most others 
of the things which have influenced the world. In it were 
organized the first National Temperance Association and the 
first National Anti-Slavery Society. 

Temperance and Anti-Slavery Movements. 

The idea of temperance at that time was purely volun- 
tary. Statutory restrictions had not been dreamed of. 
At that time and for twenty years afterward drunkenness 
was our national vice. At a large dinner like this a con- 
siderable portion of the guests would always be hopelessly 
gone, and at private dinners of fourteen, sixteen or twenty 
it was common for several of the guests to be disgracefully 
drunk. This never occurs now, either at public or private 
entertainments, no matter how free the wine. 

The purport of the anti-slavery movement was perfectly 
understood by the slaveholders and their sympathizers. 

6 



Meetings in New York and in Philadelphia were broken up 
by riots which sometimes lasted for days and in which many 
were injured and large amounts of property destroyed. In 
Connecticut a mob with a brass band interrupted a lecturer 
for the abolition of slavery and drove him out of Norwich 
to the tune of "The Rogues' March." The legislatures of 
the Southern States called upon the Northern States to 
prohibit the printing of anti-slavery publications and did 
prohibit their circulation in their commonwealths. Presi- 
dent Jackson sent a message to Congress recommending the 
passage of an act for the suppression of anti-slavery 
literature. 

The agitation begun by the formation of the National 
Anti-Slavery Society in 1834 continued with increasing vol- 
ume and vehemence. The society preached the horrors of 
slavery and then on the patriotic side a sentiment that the 
Declaration of Independence should be true in spirit as well 
as in letter. After thirty years, at the cost of a million 
lives, and, directly and indirectly, of ten thousand millions 
of dollars, and up to date three thousand millions in pen- 
sions, slavery was abolished and the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence made true in our country both in letter and spirit. 

In that year occurred the first record of a beat in journal- 
ism which has become the life of the press. The Journal of 
Commerce established relays of horses between New York 
and Philadelphia and secured the news of the White House 
and of Congress a day earlier than the other New York 
papers. 

There was great intellectual activity in the coun- 
try resulting in breaking away from the old universities. 
A liberal education was thought impossible except at Yale, 
or Harvard, or Columbia, or Princeton, but in that year 
there were twelve colleges founded in different parts of the 
country, all of which are now successful and have done 
magnificent work in higher education. 



JArKsox's Civil Service and Banking Policies. 

Andrew Jackson was President of the United States 
and William L. Alarcy Governor of the State of New 
York. The President gave his approval to the party 
platform, "That political workers are to be rewarded 
with political offices, and political parties are to be held 
together by the cohesive power of public plunder." 
That doctrine controlled the civil service of the United 
States without check or hindrance for over fifty years. 
In that year the United States national debt was paid 
off and the country started with a clean slate. In that 
year General Jackson gave his famous order for the 
removal of Government deposits from the banks. This was 
the beginning of an agitation which threw our financial 
system into chaos. It made impossible currency upon a 
scientific basis, and was the fruitful mother of the country- 
wide and disastrous panics which have so often shaken our 
financial and industrial stability. The most delicate, diffi- 
cult and dangerous of all the functions of government, the 
one upon whose proper creation and administration rests the 
whole fabric of national and individual credit, the one 
which should be adjusted and settled by the lessons of the 
experience of highly organized governments for hundreds 
of years, has from that time to this been the sport of party 
warfare, political passion and partisanship. The dead 
hand of that great, strong man still holds our financial 
system by the throat. 

Increase of Presidential Power. 

Our institutions and political policy came from England 
and were so modified by our ancestors as to meet conditions 
under a republican form of government and the expansive 
necessities of the new country. All power in the mother 
land was originally in the throne. By succeeding revolu- 
tions, the people gained more and more power until now 
they have it all, and in many respects Great Britain in its 



government is the most democratic of all countries. On 
the other hand, we began with a distrust of executive power 
and authority and our evolution has been the other way. 
Our first confederacy was a rope of sand. In our govern- 
ment under the Constitution we protected ourselves against 
the executive by a clear definition of his powers, by the 
right to override his veto by Congress, by the veto upon 
him from the Supreme Court and the power of impeach- 
ment. Our early Presidents who had taken part in the 
formation of the government were in thorough harmony 
with these limitations upon the President, and with the 
apprehension of kingly authority which had brought them 
about. With Jackson a new generation came into the 
government, a generation removed from the experiences 
and opinions of the revolution. The leader of this genera- 
tion was one of the strongest, most self-centered, autocratic 
and arbitrary of men who have ever appeared in our public 
life. He not only defied Congress and the courts, but won 
the applause of the people and changed public opinion as to 
the powers and duties of the President. From his time 
until now there has been not only in the Central Govern- 
ment, but in the States, a growing distrust of the repre- 
sentatives of the people in Congress and in the legislatures 
and an increasing confidence in Presidents and Governors. 
The literature of our magazines and of a large portion of 
the press casts doubt upon and arouses suspicion of the 
actions and the methods of successive Congresses and legis- 
latures and appeals to the President or the Governors to 
control and lead them. The writers put their faith in the 
executive and justify everything that he may do on the 
ground that the only safety of the people is in the strength, 
integrity and courage of the executive against their be- 
trayal by their representatives. 



Congressional Conditions Improved. 

And yet, any competent man who will conscientiously 
and impartially study the question come come to the con- 
clusion that the conditions of our National Congress are 
today infinitely better than ever before. There is no lobby 
at Washington. There are no interests there seeking to 
influence Senators and Members. For the times in which 
we live, for the varied necessities of our Government, for 
the legislation so much more difficult than it was in earlier 
days, both Houses of Congress in ability and patriotism 
will stand favorable comparison with what are called the 
great days of Webster, Clay and Calhoun. With Grant 
began the system of not only recommending legislation to 
Congress but transmitting bills prepared to carry that legis- 
lation into effect, and this by evolution has become the 
common practice. 

In 1834 Abraham Lincoln was elected to the legislature 
of Illinois and began his extraordinary public career. 

In 1834 Chicago received one mail a week, carried on 
horseback from Niles, Michigan, and in 1834 the Whig 
party was formed out of the disruption of the old Federal 
organization and Democrats who were anti-slavery and be- 
lieved in a liberal construction of the Constitution. 

Railroad Development. 

We can go back to this period for the beginning of the 
extraordinary change which has taken place in our business 
methods and social life. A railroad was built from Jersey 
City to New Brunswick and i)rojected on to Trenton. A 
start was made on the Erie Road. The Harlem, which 
extended through the fields from the present site of the 
City Hall in New York to the end of Manhattan Island, 
crossed the Harlem River. In other words, from small be- 
ginnings of a few miles for local traffic the expansion which 
began in 1834 has in 76 years covered the country with 234,- 
OOO miles of railway mileage and developed new territories 

10 



-with a speed unknown in the history of immigration and 
■settlement. It has transformed our land from isolated com- 
munities in which individual initiative and enterprise sup- 
plied nearly all the manufactures which they required into 
great centers of industries where mills and factories with 
enormous capital can, because of cheap transportation, get 
their raw material from great distances and give universal 
distribution to the manufactured product and place their out- 
put upon the market at a cost so low as to make competi- 
tion by the individual impossible. More and more the 
United States because of cheaper cost is bringing into every 
department of human industry greater capital and larger 
employment. It has produced, on the one hand, the gigan- 
tic corporation, and on the other, in self-defense, the labor 
unions. 

Government Control. 

The problems growing out of this development are 
the ones which this generation faces and of which the 
preceding ones were ignorant. There can be no reasonable 
doubt that the proper method of dealing with these great 
questions is not by government ownership but government 
control. Corporations are to grow larger and combina- 
tions stronger. It is the inevitable tendency of the times. 
The safety of the people is to be in having the hand of 
the government, through responsible commissions and 
courts, upon every process of organization and operation, in 
frequent reports and publicity, in the press constantly in- 
forming the people and in the President and Congress, gov- 
ernors and the legislatures, being in constant and enlightened 
touch with the situation. It is thus that we can promote 
beneficent expansion, give opportunity for individual initia- 
tive and prevent monopolistic control. 



11 



Cost of Living Then and Now. 

Just now tliere is both suffering and alarm because of high 
prices. I have not much sympathy with those who say that 
this condition is due to national extravagance. There was tre" 
mendous complaint of high prices in 1835. There is on file 
in the Treasury Department a copybook of the expenses of 
a clerk who wanted an increase of salary because of the 
unusually high cost of living. His family consisted of five 
persons and his food for the year cost him $338.10. The 
Bureau of Labor of the Government estimated last year 
that the food for a similar family now would be $312.92. 
This clerk says that his boots cost him $3.75, his cotton 
sheeting ten cents a yard (both now are about the same), 
his lamp oil one dollar a gallon (now ten cents), blacking 
of shoes twenty-five cents a shine (now five cents), flour 
eight dollars a barrel (now seven), transportation for him- 
self and wife from Washington to Martinsburg, Virginia, 
and return $32.03 (now $8.02), Martinsburg being 77 
miles from Washington; an ordinary cooking stove $49 
(now about $16.50), and a firkin of butter $10.22 
(now about $21.50). Extravagance is a relative, not a 
positive, condition. Nobody would live now as the whole 
country did in 1834 and 1835. Both men and women of 
that period were largely the manufacturers of their own 
clothes in their own houses. They cultivated their own 
little gardens without help. If they kept a horse, as many 
of them did, the care of the animal, the mending of the 
harness and the painting and repairing of the wagon were 
all done by the head of the family. The wife made the 
chil(h-en's clothes, and ran the house and a kindergarten. 



12 



Frugal Alien Saves. 

The laborer who comes here from abroad and continues, as- 
he will for a time, to live as he did at home, finds, that upon 
our wages, he is saving money rapidly and accumulating: 
according to his ideas, a comfortable fortune. In fact, 
many, retaining their habits of living which they brought 
with them, go back in a few years to lives of ease on little 
places upon the Continent. That sort of thing is carrying 
out of the United States a hundred million of dollars a 
year, but those who remain to become citizens, and those whO' 
are born here and are citizens, desire to live as an American 
artisan should and will live, in housing, clothing, food, 
educational opportunities for the children and surplus for 
travels, books and pleasure, which make the glory of Amer- 
ican citizenship. By our system of protection we have 
made it possible for the American workingman to receive 
wages in many cases double and in all cases much larger 
than in other countries. But we have not as yet protected 
^him against competition by immigrants who will work for 
what he cannot afford to work for and live as he will not 
and should not be asked to do. 

Larger Rights for Women. . 

The most beneficent of the changes which have occurred 
during my time have been the laws granting rights to 
women. In my earlier days a woman's property was her hus- 
band's, his debts were hers, and it was not until 1848 that 
she could have her independent possessions or safety in any 
business she might undertake. It was still later that she 
was accorded the privilege of a higher education and her 
intellectual necessities as well as ability considered to be 
fully equal to man's. As I used to travel through the coun- 
try on railway inspection trips, I noticed at every station 
a crowd of idlers. They knew the names of the trains, 
of the conductors and the engineers, and were eager to tell 
the waitino- traveler whether No. 2 was late or the Empire 



13 



State Express on time. I noticed that they disappeared at 
noon and at about six. Upon inquiry I found that they were 
-supported by their wives. These capable, hard-working, en- 
-ergetic women were dressmakers or milHners or kept Httle 
■stores, and their worthless husbands hung around the depot 
iDecause they had no other means of passing away time 
unless the circus was in town or elections in progress, and 
turned up invariably for meals which had been earned by 
the wife. This experience has done more than all things 
■else to bring me toward woman suffrage, for in all these 
-cases she is assuredly the better half. 

People are all influenced largely by their point of view 
rather than the merits of the question. When Captain 
Schmittberger in New York arrested a sleep-walker, the 
-man said, "Hold on, you must not arrest me. I am a som- 
nambulist." "I don't care a cuss what your religion is," 
said the Captain ; "you can't walk the street in my precinct 
in your night-shirt." 

The Bad News Teller. 

Any one who has had the opportunity to watch closely 
for half a century the psychological development of people 
finds many interesting results. The vast majority are 
neighborly, generous, sympathetic and kindly. In the evo- 
lution of influences the other sort sometimes take the lead. 
The man who inquires about your health with a suggestion 
that you are in a decline, who sympathetically wants to 
know why your wife or daughter or son was not at church 
last Sunday, with an intimation that he considers his or 
her condition rather serious, who hastens to drop every- 
thing to convey to you some bad news is common in every 
community. If some provincial journal which you are 
never likely to see, has a mean article about you this candid 
friend buys two copies, puts them in sealed envelopes, with 
two-cent stamps attached, so that you will be sure to open 
them, and mails one to your wife and one to yourself. I 

14 ' 



wonder what this person, who fears or is ashamed to give 
his name or address, gets in return for this investment of 
four cents. He may gloat over imaginary suffering as 
worth that expenditure, but can never be sure that his bolt 
hits the mark. He is a Wind speculator in malice and' 
meanness. 

Coming from a long railway journey I landed in the 
Grand Central Depot one morning between four and five 
o'clock. A man stepped up to me and said in regard to a 
very dear and valued friend: "Have you heard about 
Jim?" I said. "No. What?" He hit me a whack in the back 
that sent me off the platform on to the rails and shouted, 
".He is dead. My God! he is dead." When I recovered 
sufficiently, I said, "How came you to be here at this early 
hour?" The answer was, "The family sent me to meet you- 
and break the news gently." 

Wanted, Scandal. 

"There is a singular prevalence, temporary I am sure, 
of this sentiment just now. A well-known writer, whose 
contributions are very acceptable to the magazines, told me 
that he thought there had been quite enough of misrepre- 
sentation and unfair criticism of President Taft and his 
administration, and so he wrote some articles stating the 
conclusions which he had arrived at, and the reasons for 
them, which were favorable to the President. His employ- 
ers, the publishers, said, "Our readers don't want that. If 
you have any scandal about any public man or about Con- 
gress with enough truth to make it, when properly pre- 
sented, seem to be very bad and, therefore, sensational, that 
suits our readers and increases our circulation." 

I heard a story from a journalistic friend who publishes 
a broad and liberal paper, that the proprietor of one of 
the newspapers who makes this view of measures and men 
a specialty, having been absent for some time, turned up' 
in the editorial rooms and called the staff about him and^ 



15 



■Avanted to know if they had been off on a vacation. 
"Why?" said the astonished manager and editor. "Be- 
cause," said the boss, "I have not seen anything which flays 
or dissects anybody for a week." "But," said the manager, 
"no one of any account has said or done anything for a 
week." "\\'ell," said the boss, "we have got to keep up 
•our reputation or lose our circulation. Take the hide off 
Bishop Potter." 

Cycles in the Demand for Literature. 

The boys of my period were inspired as no other genera- 
tion has been by books by the Waverley novels. If the 
ground was susceptible, they created statesmen, soldiers and 
poets, and aroused ambitions in receptive minds to be fol- 
lowed by the best efforts of which they were capable. It 
was a liberal education to read Dickens' novels as they came 
■out one after another, the enjoyment in the last and the 
eager expectancy of the next were sensations never for- 
gotten. Dickens' intimate picture of the life of the 
ordinary home, its joys, its sorrows, its comedies and 
tragedies touched every heart and broadened every 
mind. So, when Thackeray's novels began to appear, their 
exquisite literature, their superb English, their masterly 
dissection of human motives and springs of action 
gave exquisite pleasure and created a generation of 
"brilliant thinkers and great writers. Two years ago 
while in Europe I was at one of the big hotels at 
a watering place on the Continent. The table of the read- 
ing room was strewn with cheap editions which the visitors 
had read and left behind. I never dreamed that so much 
eroticism, nastincss and brutal depravity could be printed 
and sold by reputable booksellers. But a popular writer 
told me that the publishers claimed this was the public 
taste and it demanded novels whose basic action should be 
domestic infelicities brought about by faithless wives and 
husbands and immoral adventuresses, and that no detail 
should be omitted which would give spice to the narrative. 



IB 



This sort of thing can be done in a French novel so as to 
■seem a work of art, but in English it becomes the quintes- 
sence of badness and vulgarity. In the course of a half 
century I have noticed these cycles. It is difficult to decide 
whether they are protests against Puritanism or a certain 
and sudden eagerness to show that contact with the worst 
is not injurious. Happily, this deluge of filth did not 
sweep over our country and the reaction in Europe is lead- 
ing to happy results. Serious books by eminent men upon 
live topics and with lofty ends are becoming popular, and 
the wings of genius, scoured of mud, are working to lift 
the novel, which is the companion and preacher of our 
daily life, into the air which was breathed by Walter Scott, 
Dickens, Thackeray and Kingsley. 

Unhappy is the man who is not so much dissatisfied with 
what he has as with what the other fellow possesses. Happy 
is the man who, looking over his life, its associations, its 
incidents and accidents, its friendships and its enmities, 
would not exchange with anyone, living or dead. A suc- 
cessful politician who incurred a great deal of abuse used 
to comfort himself by saying of his critic, "That man will 
•die and go to hell." He always came into my office imme- 
■diately after one of his enemies had departed and would 
.simply remark, "He is there." The result of this gentleman's 
view of those who disagreed with him led to a general ex- 
■clamation when he died himself, "Well, he is there." 

Trained Mind.s. Not Luck. 

Galileo, being one day in the cathedral at Pisa, watched 
the oscillations of a lamp suspended from the ceiling. He 
■observed that the vibrations were performed in equal time, 
and from that he invented the clock and the machinery 
whose accuracy created modern astronomy. But people 
had been watching the swinging of that lamp for hundreds 
of years and saw nothing in it. Its lesson came 
to Galileo because he was the most eminent of 



17 



the trained scientists of his time. James Hargreaves 
lived by spinning and weaving, his wife and chil- 
dren helping him. He was always experimenting and 
all his experiments were failures. One day the youngest 
member of the family, toddling over the floor, fell against 
the spinning wheel while it was working and upset it. 
Hargreaves noticed that while he retained the thread in his 
hand the wheel continued to revolve horizontally for a 
time, giving a vertical rotation to the spindle. That sug- 
gested the sphming-jenny, which, by giving England the 
command for so long a time of the cotton industry, made 
her one of the greatest manufacturing countries in the 
world. The lazy man says, "What a lucky accident," but 
Hargreaves had been trying for twenty years to discover 
this secret. Hundreds of weaving machines had been upset 
in the meantime, but it was the training, experience 
and genius of the observer which brought about this result. 
Charles Goodyear spent the best part of his life trying to 
produce vulcanized india-rubber. Angry at his failures, he 
flung a piece of rubber upon a hot stove, to find after- 
ward that the problem was solved. Rubber had been burned 
in one form or another ever since it was discovered, but 
it was the mind intent for so long upon the one purpose 
which saw in the accident the realization of his hopes. So, 
my friends, the longer we live the more firmly we are con- 
vinced that it is only training and work which win. A peo- 
ple have recently been discovered in one of the islands in 
the Bay of Bengal who wear no clothes, for in that climate 
they need none, who do not have to work for food because 
it grows in superabundance upon the trees, while a little 
exertion gathers fish from the stream or game from the 
forest. Under these conditions of absolute indolence and 
no necessity for exertion their average age is twenty-six 
years, while the hardy peasants of the Balkan Mountains, 
who, with the greatest difficulty, can scratch enough for 
existence out of the inhospitable soil, are the longest lived 
races in the world. 

18 



Roosevelt. 

It is a glorious thing for any people to have thrills 
of enthusiasm. I think all of us, no matter what 
our views of him may be, no matter how much we 
differ with him in opinion, no matter how much he may 
have antagonized some of us by his actions, feel prouder 
of the product of American liberty and opportunity because 
the eye of the world is just now filled, to the exclusion of 
all other men, by the virile figure of Theodore Roosevelt. 

Christian Unity. 

In closing this seventy-sixth anniversary there rises out 
of the past this fact of hope and aspiration. During all my 
earlier years I sat under the preaching of a learned 
preacher of the old school Presbyterian Church. His 
most fervid sermons were on Christmas and Easter. 
He claimed that there was no historical authority for these 
dates, and denounced them, to use his own language, as 
"Popish superstitions." Liberalism or modernism, or rather 
Christian charity, has softened the antagonisms and low- 
ered the barriers between churches and creeds. In these days 
of Christian unity in faith with liberty in forms, around 
every altar on Christmas are evergreens and on Easter 
flowers. The question of dates becomes insignificant com- 
pared with the tremendous consequences to humanity from 
the Birth and Resurrection, and all can now unite in a 
common celebration of these festivals. It is a long step to- 
ward the peace of the world, the Fatherhood of God and 
the brotherhood of man. 



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